Half Human
by Radical Phantom
Summary: A series of drabblings all about Greed's chimeras and the general inhabitants of the Devil's Nest. Martel, Dorchette, Bido, Roa, Kimbly, maybe even Shou Tucker. Ranging anywhere from comedy to angst. Rating just to be safe. R
1. For once it had nothing

Drabbles about Greed's merry gang of chimeras ranging anywhere from comedy to angst, or manga to anime! I'm taking suggestions so if there's something you think would be cool please tell me. I'm always open for new ideas and challenges (a challenge for me happens to be writing romance… I'd like to try to somehow.) Onward!

Living in the cell was like living in a dreamy haze, it was far too dark to feel anything close to real. Almost like a repeating nightmare, pain had been a routine; it was like putting on clothes, loading a gun.

Dorchette had been the only one of us who remained spirited and kept struggling. He had attacked guards many times. Knocking them to the ground, doing his best to make them bleed, to punish them the way he was being punished. Every one of his attempts had eventually ended up with him face first, smeared in blood on the ground of the cell, gasping heavily.

It wasn't until our fusion was officially complete that even his spirit was finally broken, until it soon disappeared completely.

Occasionally, one or two of us would awake at night on the cold cell floor, in a sweat… feeling the animals we now had within snarling and growling with fear and confusion. I included.

My body would feel tangled and empty. I wanted to slither. No I wanted to stand… I wondered why these limbs were attached to me though my other half knew they were very well supposed to be there. When this happened I would make inhuman hisses, my body would move in ways that weren't natural. That snake wanted out... and god dammit… I wanted it out too.

I could feel the snake's thoughts... its pain of having to be fused with me... and then there was the odd feeling that it could feel mine as well. Its thoughts were quick and often changed rapidly.

_Hungry…_

_Tired…_

_No more…_

_Bodies Different…_

Sharing my body had taken much getting used to. I had had to learn to ignore the snake's cries from within me. Or my cravings for mice and meat… meat and blood. No, no I can't eat blood… people do not eat blood.

That's what I would think to the creature… I would try to share with it what people did and did not do. It was more for me then for the snake. The snake would just hiss and curl up, my limbs tangled with its. I admired and hated it for being able to control us despite the situation. When it was tired we would sleep… when it was hungry we would eat though I would try my best to ignore its cries for blood. It would cause me to hiss which was embarrassing as hell for me, though I knew Dorchette and Roa both did it as well when they thought nobody could see them. I doubted it was a matter of being half bull or half-dog; hiding was simply a matter of being men.

This made me smile.

One day. I slept on the concrete floor with my limbs tangled into each other. Hearing faint howls in the night. They had taken Dorchette again was what I had guessed. I thought this, feeling nothing about it. Like a good little military girl. Remembering something an officer had told me. That worrying to much about a comrade… was an insult to how strong they were. And Dorchette was damn strong.

His screams halted and turned to ragged gasps… He was alive.

The soldiers approached with Dorchette in their arms. By this time he was unconscious, but, yes, alive, so very much alive. They pointed their guns at my comrades sleeping bodies. This made the snake protective, frozen yet ready to strike at any time. I heard the ear shattering sound of metal clashing against metal. They threw Dorchette down onto the floor, paying no attention to his injuries. By now... the snake had made up its mind before I could change it back.

It forced my body up, hissing and shaking. My mind held no reason… My body held no limits. It his and scratched against the floor. Before stretching me… My arm… wasn't where it should have been, it was at the other end of the room... damn far from where it should have been. My hisses were inhuman and loud, angry, turning to grunts as my sounds and the snakes meshed. I could hear the guard's laugh; one of them was aiming their gun…

_I'm gonna diehssssssssssss... Today isssssss… the day I'm going hssssssssss to die._

No... I can't... I won't. Not because of this fucking snake, not because I joined that god damned Special Forces unit and blew the shit out of Ishbal… This thing was an animal... why was I letting it do this? Why was I letting this thing control me?

"SHUTTTTTT _hsssssssssssssssssssss_ UP!"

It meant to be a thought but I just screamed, my lungs felt like they were about to give out, my head swarming, my fists dug into the ground, nails cracking. A few of my fingers were breaking. The snake was displeased it had been scolded by its alpha. Things were gonna be different around here if that stupid THING was sharing my body. It was now I realized this snake was a lot the Dorchette… it just wouldn't give up.

So I yelled again... and this time the guards had slammed my cell shut,

"YOU HEARD ME YOU _hsssssssss_ SLITHERING _hssssss_ PIECE OF SHIT! SHUT UP!"

And this time it did. The snake gave one last humble hiss of displeasure, now realizing just who is alpha was and just who's body it was dealing with now. The guards were gone now… they had lost interest in me… leaving me alone in my cell full of my, very confused comrades.

"Don't worry. That won't happen again."

For once it had nothing but its instinct and its body. And now it had me.


	2. Ghosts

The noise of the train pulling away was all that was heard. Leaving him standing there, as much of a sin of nature now then he ever was.

In spite of everything the man had windows of sanity, you see. They were short, often lasting no more then a day or two but they were enough to hold memories long repressed. In this particular window he had simply got up and left, in a sense.

One green hand was hidden in a layer of beige cloth and in the other was a rose, slightly withered from travel and mal-nourishment.

The act of walking suddenly became an impossible task, moving one foot in front of the other became, as if something he'd never done before. Though he had been sitting on a train for near seven hours he was exhausted in spirit.

The part of him that was still a man had been beckoning him to see her, images in dreams and faded postcards, kisses and sweet nothings that seemed all to simple back then…

Now, he latched onto the smallest form of the memories he had of such things.

He dragged himself along the side of the tracks, breathing in the familiar scents of the chilly morning air, when the townspeople would just start to rise and go about there business as normal, unaware of his presence, forever remaining oblivious that the man who had been christened dead, was here now, a living ghost.

Bido pinched himself to make sure he was still alive.

The house was just as he had left it near 16 years ago. He started to doubt she was still there. Her figure was still very clear in his mind, but she remained faceless, and something inside grew cold.

The lizard chimera gulped in spite of himself, now that he was there he wasn't exactly sure what he had planned on doing and approached the window, breathing on the chilly glass then wiping away the fog with a scaly hand.

She sat in her rocker, the face of the young bride she once was had grown pale and slightly wrinkled from worry. Though she wore layer upon layer of clothing he could see by her exposed bony fingers she had grown thin and frail. A man came up from behind her dressed in nothing but a soft robe and pulled her into his embrace.

And so he stood there, he did know that he had not planned on talking to her, on letting her know he was still there, still alive if you could call it that, living in this state. He found himself grow colder by the second, the rose had long been blown from his hands and was tumbling down a lonely street somewhere.

So he turned….

And then all at once he was gone, wind running through beige cloth. He pushed forward without looking back, hoping to get to the Devil's Nest before his short sanity was over.

The man rocked her in his arms, noticing the sudden ill look in her eyes.

"Something wrong?"

She turned her body to face him with her arm tensely gripping the rocker.

"Dear, this is absurd but… I think I heard a ghost."


	3. Curiousity killed the dog

"It's over now, Dorchette… get over it." those words she had spoken a week ago stinged all the same.

Even when she was looking perfectly calm, with those green eyes staring at nothing, he could tell she was screaming on the inside. He had memorized all her moods, from pensive to sorrow.

She loved Greed, that was a given, and if he wasn't part dog he would have never been able to tell… maybe it would have been better that way.

Perhaps Greed really could help her more then he could… comforting couldn't possibly be enough. Not that she needed it, when he tried she pretended to be stronger.

No, she needed something more, something much more. Something he was too timid to provide…

Martel was going upstairs now, he heard her thick boots on the stairs, the old floorboards creaked with each step.

Greed had just gotten back from doing some "Business" across town. Three days worth of business in fact, and three days without sex was like blasphemy in his mind.

"What do you need, sir?"

She was talking to him…. And her tone of voice made him cringe.

"Heh, I've missed you…"

"Me to, let me show you how much…"

He was aware this was practically stalking, he found himself standing outside his boss's bedroom door like a puppy waiting for its meal before he'd even realized he'd gone upstairs. Dorchette resisted the urge to claw at it. To hold her in his arms and just _tell_ her.

A laugh, moans… rustles of clothing…

Was it jealousy he felt? Jealousy of Greed for having her? Jealousy of Martel for being able to feel that, even temporary, satisfaction with life?

They uttered each others names, it was done now, and she was probably putting her clothes back on before she could even catch her own breath.

And then, he realized, it could've been him…


	4. Card night

Here was a bit of a challenge for me, since I'm so used to more description then dialogue, I wanted to try something a little different. Not as much describing how the characters are feeling, but more having them express it through speaking. Hey, if it sucks, I tried right?

"Go fish."

"There is no go fish in poker."

Kimbly sighed, a breath of ice making its way out of his mouth.

"Can't there be? I have doubles, and it'd be a shame to waste…"

"No, that'd change the entire premise of the game." Greed retorted, looking back at his cards.

"So? You've changed the 'premise' about 5 times, we started out playing spoons, remember?"

Greed looked up at his invisible halo innocently.

"Nope, I don't believe I recall… beside, how could we have? You can't play spoons with two people."

Kimbly glanced down at the un-used, rusty spoons.

"Well, I do… three hours of playing cards with a self-serving bastard will do that to you."

"Bullshit."

Kimbly raised an eyebrow,

"What do you mean bullshit? It's true."

"No, I mean bullshit; you get to have the whole deck."

Greed pushed the deck of cards in the middle towards him with a smirk.

"What the hell? That's it, I quit!"

"Oh come _on _you always quit when things don't go your way…"

"_I _always quit when things don't go my way? Every time I started to win you changed the game!"

"And I'm sick of your lying, too."

By this time, the steam was practically blowing out of Kimbly's ears.

"LYING? There are only THREE cards in this deck!"

"Ah… wow! Hey Dorchette! Stop swinging from that chandelier!"

Just as Kimbly turned around to look to where Greed had pointed, he reached into his vest and pulled out the rest of the deck, placing them atop the three cards.

"We don't have a chandel-… wait… do you think I'm an idiot or something!"

"Enough of one to not know we don't have a chandelier." Greed shrugged carelessly.

"That's it… I'm gone."

Kimbly got up and left the table as Greed watched, not even making a conscious attempt to stop him.

"Damn, I love card night."

He gathered the cards and started upstairs to Dorchette's room with a teasing smile.

Maybe he could piss off at least one more person before the night was done.

Eh, I'm not to sure how I feel about it XD. I'd love feedback.


End file.
